


What do I know?

by The_Potatoe



Category: Undertale (Video Game)
Genre: Autistic Frisk, Autistic Papyrus, Flavor Text Narrator Chara, Frisk is a gentle child, Gen, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Reader Is Frisk, ill add more tags as this goes
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-05-13
Updated: 2017-06-01
Packaged: 2018-10-31 10:19:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,855
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10897299
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/The_Potatoe/pseuds/The_Potatoe
Summary: Frisk travels through the Underground. They will not hurt a single soul.// On hiatus for reworking //





	1. The Ruins

**Author's Note:**

> Yes, I was inspired by Ed Sheeran's "What do I know?" ...It's a good song, okay?  
> This is pretty basic and I hope to have more interesting stuff in future chapters, but for now I'm relatively happy with this, even with how unoriginal it is. It's essentially my take on Frisk's Underground Experience™  
> I wrote this chap in one go and it's 3am, so I apologise for any glaring mistakes I missed.

Your feet are aching from standing for so long. On top of that, after having "friendliness pellets" and this Froggit's own attack flung at you, you are sore all over. Toriel, the kind monster who saved you from Flowey just minutes earlier, gave you clear instructions for situations like this. When a battle begins, you are talk to the monster, stalling until Toriel comes to save you. But now, you are hurt and scared and this monster just attacked you for no reason at _all._

It's your turn, but you hesitate to do as Toriel told you. She didn't even notice that a monster had attacked you! It wasn't as if you expected her to care about you, though, so it's no surprise. Toriel is an adult, and adults don't care about ratty little kids like you. You're not important enough for them to waste energy on. Knowing this, you find yourself quietly appreciating the fact that she had spoken to you at all. She must be a very patient person to put up with a kid like you. Or maybe she was just a good actor..

The Froggit before you is growing restless, waiting for you to make a decision. It's gonna hurt you again, and it's not an adult so it's okay to hit it back. The monster started it, anyway. You raise your hand, gripping your stick tightly, and prepare to strike. Kill or be killed, right? The Froggit notices the movement and its eyes squeeze shut as it tenses visibly.

And then you remember. You remember flinching back when someone at school made a too-loud noise, you remember your shaky hands clumsily bandaging your injuries, you remember making apology after apology until you got hit again for it. Maybe.. maybe Froggit was like you.

Not hostile, but scared.

Not good, but trying.

You stare at the stick for a moment before dropping your arm to your side. You turn your gaze to the monster before you and smile warmly. You've made a decision.

***ACT**

"You look nice today," you tell the Froggit, tentative but sincere. Your voice is a bit hoarse, you don't like to use it very often, but maybe this Froggit is worth the trouble. Chara pipes up once more, telling you that Froggit didn't understand what you said but was flattered anyway. Froggit doesn't have a chance to react further before Toriel steps in front of you and glares at Froggit, who quickly hops away. Despite the initial fear, that went quite well. You're pleased.

As you travel through the ruins, you had many other encounters with monsters. Each time, no matter how they've hurt you, you spare the monster that attacked you. The more encounters you have, the more you come to realise the reasons the monsters attack you. You're strange and unfamiliar, an intruder in the place they call home. If some strange person suddenly appeared in your home, you know you would be upset and afraid, too. Maybe you wouldn't start a fight with the person, but the point still stands.

Besides, once you knew what to do to placate them, the monsters were quite fun to play with. The moldsmals are great dancers, you had found.

You venture through the majority of the ruins on your own, solving the puzzles you crossed with Chara's assistance. They help you read the signs, written in strange symbols, and give you hints when you need them. By the time you get to Toriel's house, you are sore and tired and hurt, but the sight of Toriel makes you inexplicably happy. When she sees your state, she heals you right up and gives you a look so warm that you wouldn't have thought was directed at you had there been anyone else in the room.

She gives you your own bed and a warm piece of pie and you don't understand why she would be so nice to you, but you appreciate it anyway. You notice Chara has been a little quiet since you entered the house, but you disregard it for now. It's none of your business.

You feel ungrateful and spoiled for it, but you want to leave the ruins, so you ask Toriel anyway. She gets upset. For a moment you wonder if she'll finally break character and hit you for your rudeness. But apparently Toriel isn't like the other adults you know, and she merely changes the subject.

Unfortunately for her, you can be very stubborn when you want to be.

It breaks your heart, but you ask her again, set on pressing the matter until she gives you a response you can work with. You're nervous and a bit distressed, but you manage to force yourself to continue talking to her, quiet as your words are. If she is annoyed by the the near compulsive way you pull and pick at your sweater's long sleeves while you talk, she doesn't show it. When she snaps her book shut you flinch back, expecting it to be thrown at you. Instead, she puts it down and leaves the room.

You follow after her into the basement, ignoring her warnings to go back. Once you arrive at the door at the end of the long corridor, she's visibly upset and she's talking to you and-

You're pulled into a fight.

***Toriel blocks the way!**

\---

It is at Toriel's hands that you die for the first time.

It is not quick or painless. Her flames burn you, eating through clothes and skin and hair until your HP drops to zero and you watch, hardly lucid, as your soul shatters to weakly glowing pieces. Everything goes black. A foreign, yet familiar sounding voice whispers in your head, "Stay Determined."

You are in a void. You are nothing. There is nothing. But then, there is, and you're something again. You are DETERMINED. Suddenly, you find yourself standing outside of Toriel's house with your skin back to its natural colour and your soul in one piece.

You're shaking.

When you finally calm yourself down, you hesitantly enter the house. Nothing has changed. Toriel is right where she was the last time you entered. Was.. was that real? You can still smell singed hair, yet you are completely fine. This didn't make sense.

In a panic, you run straight to the basement the first chance you get. Toriel stops you and you think she's going to attack you, you're going to die _again_ and you can't do anything to stop it from happening. But then.. Toriel takes your hand and leads you back to the foyer. "I think you should play upstairs instead," she tells you, voice soft and patient. With a nod, you go off to your room and lay on the bed until you fall asleep.

The next time she fights you, memories from your previous try have you hesitating and making silly mistakes. Your death, this time, is quicker but no less painful. Right before your soul shatters, you see Toriel's face and find not vitriol or triumph- simply an expression of shocked horror.

A dark voice in the back of your mind tells you she _should_ feel bad about hurting you like that. It wants you to feel satisfied and pleased by Toriel's guilt, but you shove it down and ignore it- she hadn't meant to kill you.

While shaken, you calm yourself more quickly this time and enter the house with little trouble. Once she pats your head and leaves, you allow yourself a brief moment to imagine what it would be like if you did stay with Toriel. Warm meals, affectionate gestures- no. Even if you _did_ deserve her love, you still have to leave the ruins. You yourself don't even know why you are so set on this, but you will do it anyway. You refuse to let yourself die again.

Toriel knows best for you. She is only protecting you.

You try again.

Though frustrated and scared, you resist the urge to use your makeshift weapon on the woman before you. She, she _killed_ you. She _burnt you alive_. That alone is enough to make you want to lash out, to protect yourself from more pain. You could probably do it, too. She wouldn't expect you to hurt her back. Your parents never did, even if they punished you for it. But.. what does violence solve? Hurting Toriel won't help anyone. She has her own life here and you have no right to take it from her, regardless of what she has done to you. Mind made up, you enter the fight with your head held high, determination burning in your eyes.

Finally, you are able to recognise the patterns of her attacks and avoid them fairly well. You are still forced to eat most of your food- not the pie, though. The pie is too important. You continue trying to talk to her and begin sparing her when you can't think of anything to say. Talking isn't your only option. You don't have to hurt her, so you won't. You're sure she's as upset as you are, there's no reason for you to hurt her at all here. Even if she _has_ killed you twice already, you have no right to judge her.

Toriel goes quiet. It's like that for a few rounds of attacks before she breaks her silence. "What are you doing?" she asks, voice strained and monotonous.

You spare her again. "I don't want to fight."

Flames dance around you, burning the edges of you clothes after several close calls. She takes a deep breath and you can hear frustration in her voice as she raises it. "Attack or run away!"

You spare her.

"What are you proving this way?" Toriel's voice is subdued. If you didn't know any better, you'd say it was almost pained. She looks away and attacks once more. You brace yourself, preparing to dodge out of the way. One more hit and your soul will shatter. The flames- aren't going anywhere near you. Why...?

Doesn't matter. ***Spare**

She turns her gaze to you again, looking stern as she tells you, "Fight me or leave!" Her attack misses by a large margin and she looks away from you again. Absently, you notice Chara has gone completely silent.

***Spare**

"I know you only want to go home, but..." That's not it.

***Spare**

"But please... go upstairs now." You can't do that.

***Spare**

"I promise I will take good care of you here." You know, and it hurts you more than your burns.

***Spare**

"I know we don't have much, but..." That's isn't true.

***Spare**

"We can have a good life here." That is.

***Spare**

"Why are you making this so difficult?" Around you, everything is silent.

***Spare**

She looks very sad. "Please, go upstairs," she tries once again, voice melancholic.

***Spare**

She's silent for another moment.

Suddenly, Toriel laughs. It's a broken, empty sound. You spare her again.

"Pathetic, is it not? I cannot save even a single child." This isn't your fault, you want to tell her. You don't, though. Instead, you spare her yet again. The smile now on her face is one is quiet resignation.

She goes silent again. ***Spare**

"No, I understand," she says, eyes betraying her sadness. "You would just be unhappy trapped down here. The ruins are very small once you get used to them. It would not be right for you to grow up in a place like this," Toriel pauses, blinking moisture from her eyes, "My expectations... My loneliness... My fear... For you, my child, I will put them aside."

The fight is over.

Toriel asks that if you leave, you do not return. It is with a big, warm hug and transparent hesitation that Toriel leaves you by the exit. You stare down the corridor in silence for a few minutes before a quiet word from Chara gets your thoughts running again. You thank them silently as you turn, set your jaw, and leave the ruins.


	2. Snowdin (Pt. 1)

The corridor leading out of the ruins is silent. As you walk, you hear the sound each careful step you take echo around you. It's making you anxious. Chara's silence isn't helping. You grip your left arm with your right hand, tap tap tap-ing the arm rhythmically with your fingers and humming quietly to yourself.

After what feels like an eternity, but can only have been a few minutes, you reach the end of the corridor. The first thing you notice is that it's much lighter at the end. The next thing you notice is the dark, mostly empty room the corridor leads to. In the centre, lit up as if he's under a spotlight, is Flowey. You make sure your face is blank as ever as you approach the flower. He's in the way, blocking the final door separating you and your freedom from this suffocating, enclosed space.

You don't really care about what he's saying until, "You didn't kill anybody this time. But what will you do if you meet a relentless killer?" Flowey looks at you, watching intensely. You focus your eyes on his petals and fidget as his eyes continue to bore into you.

"You'll die and you'll die and you'll die," he tells you, voice chipper as ever, "until you tire of trying."

"What will you do then?" You don't know. You don't- "Will you kill out of frustration? Or will you give up entirely on this world..." No, you won't kill, you can't.. You definitely won't give up. You've given up once before and you refuse to go down that path again. It was what had trapped you here and it won't be what gets you out.

"... and let ME inherent the power to control it?" he finishes dramatically. By now, that unnaturally wide smirk is creeping you out. Chara informs you that you aren't the only one who thinks he's pulling a 'totally scary face'. He continues talking about his plan and frankly, it's disturbing.

Flowey laughs- it's a shrill, echo-y noise that hurts your ears. His face morphs into a large, ghastly grin that gives you chills. Then, he's gone, burrowed into the ground and out of sight. It takes you a moment to gather yourself before you begin moving again. What he said doesn't matter.

You'll find a way to get through this without hurting anyone.

..right?

\---

The air is dry and freezing outside of the ruins. For a moment, you let yourself be confused about how snow could fall underground, but Chara's response of "Magic," is enough to satisfy you. You wrap your arms around yourself as you plod through the snow, trying to save what body heat you can. There seems to be a path, separating two towering walls of trees. It's incredibly daunting- you feel very small. But you trudge on, focusing on putting one shaky foot in front of the other.

The light reflecting from the snow hurts your eyes, but you have to see where you're going and end up squinting at the middle-distance. You hear noises around you that out you on edge, the eerie rustle of leaves, a crunching eerily like footsteps sounding behind you.. You pause to look over your shoulder and see nothing. Chara suggests that maybe, you're just paranoid. You think they're probably right and force yourself to keep moving- the sooner you find shelter from this cold, the better.

A fallen tree branch lies in the middle of the path, you hop over it easily. A few metres later there's a resounding crack that makes you jump from fright. Tense, you turn around and look for the cause of the noise and your eyes land on the branch. Or at least what used to be a branch, now broken in half and splintered down the middle. With a gulp, you turn back around and increase your pace.

Tap-tap-tap. It'll be fine, you'll be okay. Tap-tap-tap. Just keep going, keep going, keep going...

There's some kind of bridge ahead, you've almost reached it, but then. The footsteps behind you are definitely real now, and you can't move, you're terrified. Then there's a voice, it's slow and deep and the quiet threat of it reminds you of a person you never want to think about again.

 **"Turn around and shake my hand."** There's a command in that voice and something deep in your heart is frozen and. You turn around. You don't like touching other people very much, especially strangers, but this person (man? monster?) told you to, so..

You reach out your hand and grasp the hand. The hand has a bit of rubber on it, it feels so _wrong,_ and it must be a whoopee cushion, if the loud noise it makes is anything to go by. You think you hear Chara giggle, but you're distracted by the feeling of rubber against your skin. As soon as you can, you retract your hand and tap and rub at the skin repetitively where it touched rubber, as if you could rub away the lingering sensation. Usually, you would hum and whistle and fidget until the feeling of _wrong_ went away, but that's annoying. You don't want to annoy him.

The monster introduces himself as Sans after laughing about his trick. He tells you a little bit about himself- he's supposed to be on the lookout for humans and he has a brother named Papyrus. You notice his mouth doesn't move when he talks and his smile is frozen in place. For a moment, you let yourself be amused by the joke you accidentally made. Chara tells you it was "an _ice_ one".

With his face frozen like that, you have no way to tell what he's thinking and it puts you on edge (You've ever been good at reading facial expressions, but seeing some evidence of emotion was comforting to you). Part of you wonders why he hasn't yelled yet. Another part of you screams to run away from the stranger. You don't, if only because he would get mad, and you know what happens when you make adults mad.

Sans ushers you over the bridge towards his brother, the 'human hunting fanatic.' That dark voice speaks again, urging you to attack before you get hurt or killed. You wish the voice would shut up and hate yourself for those unfair, violent thoughts. The skeleton tells you to hide, which you do gladly. It's confusing though- didn't he just say his brother-?

His brother is loud. Even from a distance, his yelling hurts your ears and makes you go tense, anticipating- something. The way he yells, though, is unfamiliar to you. It isn't angry and scary, just.. exuberant. And a bit frustrated, because Sans hasn't recalibrated his puzzles? Eventually Papyrus walks away and it goes quiet again. You move from your hiding spot and go to leave, but Sans speaks to you again, asking you to play along with Papyrus.

Why should you play along with him? He's big and loud, which makes him scary, and you want to get out of this cold. You're sure that your face is all red by now. Plus, your nose is running, which is gross. But Papyrus didn't do anything bad on purpose, and you feel like you owe Sans for not being caught or killed by a hostile monster yet.

So you nod and go along and find out some things.

Sans is observant and supposedly devoted to looking after the humans his brother tries to capture, because "how can the human get through all your cool puzzles if they're chilled to the bone?" You find that his jacket is fluffy and warm, and stroking the lining is incredibly relaxing. Sans also loves making jokes. Especially puns, which both you and Chara find hilarious. Even more hilarious, though, is Papyrus's faux hate for them and his frustration when he lets smiles slip through.

Papyrus, too, is very observant, as after the first puzzle, where you flinched at his volume, the skeleton seems to speak more quietly when he explains his puzzles to you. Papyrus has a big, bright grin and is very passionate about his puzzles and his spaghetti- which you'd have loved to try, had it been edible. His grin is big and for once, you're pretty sure it's genuine.

In between puzzles, you meet official members of the Royal Guard, which consists of several dogs. They're all bigger than you and stronger than you, their scratches hurt and their yapping is squeaky in the worst way. You die once, killed by the Dogi, and cry when you come back. It's so hard, you can feel you're pushing your body to its limits and it would be over so much sooner if you just-

But they're dogs, an animal you've always liked. You have to give them a chance, just like Toriel gave you one. You think of how soft and nice Lesser Dog's fur was, how friendly the dogs probably are, and find it in you to keep going. You manage to get through every encounter through petting and playing.

Impossibly, you find yourself relaxing around the pair of skeletons, slowly warming up to them and their banter. There's a fondness growing within you, making you both wary and happy. You manage to spare a few words to thank Sans for letting you borrow his jacket and tell Papyrus you like his puzzles. Papyrus's joyful reaction makes you feel warm all over.

You get through puzzle after puzzle without much problem. By the time you reach the town, creatively named 'Snowdin', your eyes are sore from light and squinting alike, you can't feel your face and your feet and many bruises ache. You're sore and limping, the only food you have left is Toriel's pie, and you can't really feel your fingers. Despite this, you keep moving forward and into the town, DETERMINED.

As you continue on, you can't help but flap-flap-flap your arms, because these strange monsters aren't just monsters anymore, they're your friends. Your friends are very nice and you let yourself be happy to have them, happy that you chose MERCY. Your lips stretch unwillingly into an unpracticed smile that crinkles your eyes.

The town is warm and the people are friendly, so you flap-flap-flap and smile-smile-smile as you buy warm food from the shop and take a nap in the inn and look at the books in the librarby. But after a lot of smiling and warming yourself up in the hospitable buildings, it's finally time for you to keep going.

You wonder if you will see Sans and Papyrus again.. You want to do more puzzles with Papyrus. You want to tell Sans a joke- and you need to return his fluffy jacket. But you don't want to overstay your welcome in this friendly place and you need to get going. And so, with your stomach full and your heart heavy, you make your way past Sans and Papyrus' colourful house, following the stone pathway leading to Waterfall.

You don't get very far before Papyrus stops you.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is kinda unedited.. oops. I decided to split the chapter so I could get this one out now. Exams are over, so I should have more time to write at least!


End file.
